Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

point. Would you rather have someone who truly loves you or someone who makes all the right moves? And don’t say both. Such things have been known to happen but hardly ever.”

Rachel stared at Angela, the pot spinning between her palms. “It sounds to me like you’ve given this an awful lot of thought, Angie.”

“Yes, I have.”

Rachel lifted her hands and straightened her back. “Okay,” she said. “I guess if I had to choose, I’d keep what I’ve got.”

“Of course you would.”

“Which doesn’t mean it’s perfect.”

“I never said it was.”

Rachel thought a lot about such things that winter. A week before Christmas, when Joe showed up at her house to bake cookies, she was at first tempted to send him home. She hadn’t heard from him in days, but she knew he’d been to town: Angela had fed him supper more than once, and Earl had sold him a new chisel. But there he stood on her front porch, his cheeks blazing, his shoulders hunched against the cold. Ian’s truck sat in her driveway, knocking softly. Looking past him, down the hill toward her neighbors, Rachel could see chimney smoke. The cold night air was tinted with the color of Christmas lights. Joe opened the paper sack in his arms: he had brought with him sugar, flour, butter, chocolate chips and coconut, raisins, even vanilla, dear as it was, and the first set of cookie cutters he’d ever owned.

“Come on in,” she said after a moment and led him to the kitchen.

They baked Toll House cookies, cinnamon stars, butter thins, pin-wheels, and maple curls. It took them hours. By the time they were finished, the kitchen was hot and gritty with spilled sugar, but there were cookies everywhere, cooling, and Rachel was glad he had come.

“I missed you this week,” she said to him, around midnight, as they sat at the kitchen table, eating cookies and drinking cold milk.

“But you slept, didn’t you?”

“Of course. Didn’t you?”

“I suppose,” he said. “It wasn’t easy.”

“I’ll bet that Schooner is damned cold,” she said, grinning.

Joe put down his milk and picked up her hand. “I have a lot of good reasons for living out there, cold as it is, but it’s hard to remember them when I’m here with you.”

He stood up and leaned across the table, pulling her toward him so he could kiss her. She licked a trace of sugar from his cheek. “You taste good,” she murmured.

“Come on,” he said, leading her toward the stairs.

Her bedroom was very cold. As he took off Rachel’s clothes, Joe could feel her warming the air around them. He felt incapable of letting her go, even for a moment.

When she wrapped her arms around him so that her breasts swept across the cloth of his shirt, Rachel felt herself loosen inside. She stepped back then, quickly, to help him off with his clothes and pull the blankets from her bed. When they lay down on the freezing sheets, they gasped and shuddered. It was so cold, their bodies so insistent, that neither of them wanted to wait another moment.

Joe lay down upon Rachel and she was instantly warmed. She brought her legs up around him, stroked him with her thighs, with both hands pulled his head down and kissed him slowly, her lips slack, every inch of her drenched in longing.

As much as they could, they made love gradually, each stroke bringing sounds from their throats. But when Joe paused to give himself time, to slow his body, Rachel slapped her hands down against the small of his back and hurried them so that it was quickly over, leaving them sated, smiling, wrapped together until their skins began to chill, and then, beneath the blankets, they were asleep.

After a while, Rachel woke and remembered the cookies in the kitchen below. She crept downstairs and put them all away, then returned to Joe where he lay, deeply sleeping, as perfect as she needed him to be.

She lay next to him for a long time, thinking about the question that Angela had asked her, and about Joe’s reasons for staying in Belle Haven, and about her own.

The next morning, after Joe had left, Rachel got into her truck and headed for Randall. There were two things she wanted to buy.

First she went to see Mr. Murdock, the lawyer who had helped put her parents’ affairs in order and who was now helping her to manage her own, considerable estate.

Rachel had always impressed Mr. Murdock as being a very sensible young woman: she had invested her money wisely and then left nearly all of it alone, comported herself well, did not seem given to costly whims or gestures. Which is why he was so surprised by the request she made that morning.

“I’m not sure I understand,” he said. When he raised his eyebrows, his forehead wrinkled up into his thinning hair. “You want to buy up Belle Haven?”

“Not right now,” she said, aware that he would think her odd no matter how she explained herself. “And not all of it. Obviously I can’t afford more than a few pieces. But what I’d like you to do is start investigating whether or not the government has any plans to relocate or otherwise meddle with us. I’ve seen a lot of unfamiliar cars around town and too many strangers in city clothes. They’ve been asking a lot of questions, writing down the answers. They aren’t reporters.” She was not concerned with Mr. Murdock’s opinion of her, but she could not help seeing herself through his watchful eyes and she knew she would have to forgive him for the look he now gave her. “And the man who has always been in charge of fire intervention, as they call it—although he hasn’t done any intervening to speak of—has been around a lot, too, even though he doesn’t seem to have any new project in the works.”

“All of which you take to mean that the government has thrown in the towel, given